The Ferryman Calls
by Nevrmore
Summary: Ghouls are not born, they're turned. Slaves are not trained, they're forced. Killers are not taught, they're bred. The tale of Charon, a ghoul who never had anything to give, but everything to lose.
1. The Second Sun

The sky was white, and his skin was burning. The red ball he was holding popped in his hands, sending rubbery remnants flying in all directions, caught on the fierce wind that howled like a runaway freight train forcing itself between the trees and the houses, into his face and eyes and pushing him farther and farther away. There was a loud shotgun-bang as the door to his house swung open, slamming against the adjacent wall enough to crack the knob.

He didn't hear anything, but he felt a firm arm wrap around him and lifted him up. He was carried through the yawning mouth of the doorway into his home, his vision blacking out as he was brought in from a world of eye-stabbing luminescence into a dark room with the lights off. The winds continued to rush past the house, whistling a morbid tune, beckoning any intrepid young lads to come and meet it. A spider-web of cracks began to sound out as rubble slammed against the windows. On every front, he was assaulted by strange sounds, uncanny sights.

The stairs were alive with activity, a fusillade of footfalls charging down the steps with a growing intensity.

"Dad, what's going on??" Someone had asked. His eyes were still adjusting to the low level of light in the house, but the boy knew that was his sister speaking.

"No time, get to the basement! Everybody to the basement!" The authoritative voice of the boy's father commanded. Neither of the children said a word of protest - a unique response that was both refreshing but terrifying, highlighting exactly how grim the situation is. They both ran towards the kitchen, except for the boy who was still tucked securely under his dad's arm.

"Howard, what's happening?" A soft, but shaking, voice asked. The lad could start making out the pink nightgown of his mother on the dim backdrop of the wall.

"I'm not sure. Just get to the bunker. Come on." The father - Howard - said, somewhat more soothingly than he had with his children. The boy finally opened his mouth and spoke.

"Daddy, what's going on?" He sniffled. His flesh felt tender and seared, but the pain was starting to die down.

"Nothing, son. We're just taking a little trip downstairs." Howard answered as nonchalantly as he could. The three of them quickly followed the boy's siblings to the kitchen, hanging a left into the doorway that led to a rickety set of old, wooden stairs. They descended as quickly as they could, almost two stories deep, before dropping down onto the cold, cement floor of the shelter. Howard set his son down finally and turned, closing the thick, steel door in an impressive show of strength, locking the latch securely.

Now in the safety on the blast-out bunker, the two teens proceeded to vomit questions to their parents.

"What's happening??"

"What was that bright light??"

"Why are we down here?!"

Howard raised his hands up to silence them, though it didn't do much good.

"Everybody, calm down!" He finally said, his voice reverberating around the shelter. Both the boy and girl immediately silenced themselves once again. "Now look, I don't know what's going on. Maybe it's...Maybe it's nothing, just some strange natural occurrence or something." His tone defied his words. "But for now, we're going to stay down here in the basement until we know everything is safe."

"How long is that going to be??" The teenaged boy asked, his voice cracking in exasperation.

"I'm sure it won't be more than a few hours, okay? Look, we have a radio set up over there. We'll just listen to the news for the go-ahead that everything's alright, and then we can go back up and resume life.."

The young boy wasn't paying much attention. He had never been down in the basement before, and he was taking time out to stroll around and examine everything. There was a large refrigerator that looked almost bigger than the one they had upstairs, and an equally impressive dresser. There was a small cooler full of bottled water, and a desk where the aforementioned radio was sitting. Off in the corner were several cots, their blankets haphazardly draped over them. Of course, the boy didn't care about all of these details, he was looking for something fun. A toy, or a book maybe. He settled for an old copy of "You're SPECIAL!" laying on the desk, even though he had read it before. As he turned to go find a nice place to sit and read, he glimpsed his mother and father, holding each other in silence. It was a pose that was very familiar to him...

"Lousy sons of bitches!" Howard had slammed his fist on the kitchen table, hard.

"Dear, calm down! You're going to wake the kids!" His loving wife tried to dodge the coming firestorm. The young lad, who had a secret habit of not going to sleep when he was told, watched through a crack in the door.

"They can't do this, Donna. What right do these bastards have to turn us away?!" Howard stood up from his chair quickly, sending it grating across the floor. He threw the letter in his hand to the ground. The little boy had been too far away to read any of it, he only remembers what looked like a picture of a large gear stamped on the front.

"I'm sure they had a good reason, Howard! They can't accept everybody, it's a very limited space!" The mother was now becoming more fiery in her own attempts to sate her husband's anger.

"We've never stepped an inch out of line for this country. We're the Nuclear Family, god dammit! We should have been FIRST on that list! FIRST!" He snatched up the paper once again and re-read it, just to make sure he wasn't dreaming and that someone actually had the audacity to spurn him and his family.

"Please, calm down, Howard. We have the shelter...I'm sure that's just as good." Donna was becoming exasperated. Howard ran his hand through his hair, breathing deeply. With that momentary silence, it seemed, all at once, that all the anger had suddenly dissipated from the room, leaving an even worse depression behind. The husband and wife turned and embraced each other, the same pose that had kicked off the memory. The mother sobbed softly.

"It's going to be okay." Howard whispered reassuringly in stark contrast to his attitude just a few moments prior. "Everything's going to be fine." His tone betrayed him again.

The boy didn't understand fully what he was watching, but he knew enough that it was best for him to leave. He quietly made his way back up the stairs and into his room, falling asleep without a second thought...

"Dad, this radio sucks."

Howard ignored his son's smart-alec comments and continued stalwartly turning the dial on the old tranceiver. Every station was nothing but white noise.

"I'm sure it's just some interference. Once we get out of local range, we should get something that'll tell us everything's safe and we're all overreacting." Howard let out a solitary "Heh.", though it didn't catch on. "Everything's going to be fine."

With an electrical crackle, a voice suddenly filled the room.

"I REPEAT: THE BOMBS HAVE DROPPED!"

As the air was sucked out of the room in one collective gasp, Howard lowered his head. Shit.


	2. A Wasteland Greeting

Life in the bomb shelter was strained, at best. It took days for everyone to get over the initial shock of hearing that nuclear Armageddon had actually come to pass - everyone except the little boy, anyway, who didn't understand exactly the gravity of the situation - and beyond that, simply the limited space, the finite resources, to perpetual darkness, it was enough to eat away at even the most patient and reserved of people after an extended period of time.

It had been a year. Over twelve months had come and gone since that booming voice from the radio, like the voice of God himself, had announced the end of the world, and tensions were rapidly rising. Food was finally starting to run thin, water going even faster. The two teens - Alex and Joanne - were finally finding it impossible to suppress their natural desire to go and explore and just be away from the same people they always saw every day. The little boy was starting to get ill, it seemed. His skin was constantly flaking, his throat always sore.

Alex thumped his head against the wall gently, again and again.

"I seriously can't take this anymore, Dad." He said. He was tired of all the arguing to leave the bunker that he had partaken in for many months now, but not quite tired enough to give up completely. "I think I'm getting cabin fever, for real."

"Oh shut up, you idiot." Joanne snapped. Unlike her brother, who had let the fire in his belly dwindle to a spark, the captivity had done nothing but increase hers. She struck at every comment venomously.

"Joanne, calm down!" Donna tried to defuse the situation before it started.

"It's okay, Mom." Alex said weakly, still facing the wall. "It's not Joanne's fault that all the radiation mutated her to be on a period 24/7."

"Shut it, you dumb asshole!" Joanne cried again, hopping up from her cot and pushing her brother forcefully.

"Stop it, you two!" Howard shouted, "We're the only ones we got and I'll be damned if I'll let us lose each other to your little squabbles!" That had become something of a catch-phrase of his. Joanne, in response, simply shot Alex with the evil eye and returned to her bedside, sitting down with a hard thump and crossing her arms. This was even worse than the constant bickering had been, Howard could just feel a seething disdain for the whole situation, for their confinements, for each other, building up. It was only a matter of time before it finally came to a head.

There was a quick succession of metallic pings near the door to the shelter that quickly alerted everyone's attention.

"What was that?" Alex asked, turning in the direction of the noises.

"Probably just a tin can or something that came rolling down the stairs." Howard reasoned.

"Do you think that maybe-" Donna started, but was cut off.

"No, honey, no! You can't go thinking that every little sound you hear means there's someone making it!"

"What? Someone's out there?" Joanne cut in, hearing only half of the conversation.

"No!" Her father said again, "It was just the wind, I'm sure of it!"

"But what if it's not though, Dad?" Alex turned around finally to face his family. "I mean, what if there really is someone out there?"

"There's nobody out th-"

"How can you be sure, Dad? Come on!" Joanne interrupted.

"Howard...It's been a year." Donna cooed soothingly in her husband's ear. "And there really might be people out there. Don't you think it's safe, now?"

Howard sighed, exasperated.

"Fine, fine! I'll go up and check." He said, finally.

"Yes!" Alex and Joanne began to form a line behind him.

"No, you are all staying down here. It might still be dangerous."

"Awww, come on!" Alex moaned.

"No! This is the best you're going to get! Now stay down here. I'll be back in a minute."

Alex and Joanne both moaned in displeasure and walked back to their original positions: Joanne on her bed, Alex leaning against the wall. The little boy remained on the floor, scratching at random patches of crumbling skin.

Howard approached the door hesitantly. He had allowed his imagination to run wild in the year of confinement about what the outside world looked like, leaving vivid, terrifying images of what lay beyond their steel barricade. He glanced back at his wife, who gave a small but reassuring nod. With a deep breath, he turned back to the door and, for the first time in almost fourteen months, lifted the latch.

The door creaked open in a whine to be oiled, a request not likely to be met any time soon. As he slipped out, onto the stairwell, he spied the can that had made its clandestine leap down the stairs. Howard's worry grew as he examined it - charred black, lid blown open, the contents gone - spilled out or evaporated or some other misfortune. After a moment, he steeled himself again, and made his way up the staircase to ground level, though this resolution was quickly draining out as well as he noticed sunlight filtering in through the broken remains of the basement door, hanging off a lone hinge, ajar.

The scene at the top of the stairs was a horrific one. Howard's house was all but gone, leaving little left than some of the frame, probably destroyed by another, closer explosion after the initial one that caused him to retreat into the bunker. All of his and his family's worldly belongings existed now as piles of dust and ash coating the smashed concrete floor of his destroyed abode. He couldn't help but to let out a gasp.

"What was that?" A voice snapped. Howard felt his breath catch in his throat. Boots stomping through dirt and shattered glass filled his ears from behind him, around the lone, intact wall of his house. "Anybody there?" The voice continued after Howard stood silently at the door, hoping that the intruder would simply go away if he waited long enough. Eventually, the figure that the voice belonged to rounded the corner. "Who the fuck are you?!" He shouted, spotting Howard instantly. The unarmed family man quickly raised his hands into the air.

"Nobody! I'm nobody! I mean you no harm!" He spoke rapidly, noticing that, aside from the brash man's strange looking attire, he had what appeared to be a working, sawed-off shotgun in his hand.

The man looked Howard over.

"Where the fuck did you come from, buddy?" He asked, noticing the shaking man's comparatively normal mode of dress.

"This is, this was my house." Howard said again, trying not to fumble over his own words. "When, when the bombs dropped, my family and I moved down into a small shelter that we had made, we've been there ever since." Howard had diverted his eyes to the ground, not wanting to look the man in the face, but he heard his boots shuffling across the dust and ash as he walked around him.

"You and your family have been down in there for under a year?" He finally asked after a long silence.

"Yeah." Howard answered, slightly more comfortable as it sounded like his assailant was softening up to his plight.

"A little mini-Vault built for five, eh?" He asked. Howard couldn't help but chuckle a bit.

"Yeah, I guess you could say that." He looked up to the man, a small smile spreading over his face.

With a thundercrack, the intruder unloaded both barrels of his shotgun right at Howard's head, sending miscellaneous chunks of viscera and bloodspray all over the last, standing wall behind him. His body jumped into the air, slamming against the same wall and stumbling to a resting place on the ground.

"Come on, boys!" The murderous man shouted, loading two more shells of buckshot into his gun, "I found us a little mine o' gold!"

"What was that??" Alex sprang off from the wall as he heard the gunshot above. Donna felt her heart stop.

"Mom? Mom, is Dad okay??" Joanne stood up from the bed and walked to her, but she was frozen in time, until she heard the sound of several heavy footsteps making their way down the stairs.

"We've got to lock the door!" She shouted, jumping over to the barricade. With all her might, she gave it a hard push to shut it as quickly as she could. There was a loud thud as the edge of the door slammed against a rifle barrel, which had been shoved between it and the doorframe just before they could meet. "Oh God!" Donna gasped.

"Well hello, there." A face peeked into the room from the crack, smiling sadistically. With a powerful kick, one of the assailants knocked the door open, sending Donna to the floor.

"Run! Run!" She managed to shriek out to her children before she felt the muzzle of the rifle that had kept her from locking the door jam against her temple, and with another loud bang, sent her to a black rest.

"Mom!" Alex and Joanne cried in unison. The little boy, scared and confused, dove underneath one of the cots. Alex, filled with rage, charged at the man who had just shot his mother, grappling and scratching him with his hands.

"Argh, get this fucker off of me!" He howled, slamming the butt of his rifle into Alex's side.

"I got him!" A third intruder pulled a knife and quickly jumped over to his comrade, jabbing the teen straddling him several times in the back and sides. Alex screamed out in pain, which quickly turned into a gurgle as blood filled into his mouth. He let go of his mother's attacker and fell to the ground, where he was punctured several more times with the blade until the stabhappy man was sure that the boy was dead.

"Hey, that bitch is getting away!" Joanne heard one of them scream as she dove past them and made a furious run up the stairs.

"Move over, move over!" The last of the quartet pushed past his partners and pointed his uzi upwards, letting go with a fusillade that sent bullets from one wall to the next, striking Joanne several times in the legs. She cried out as she fell forward, her body catching on the steps. The four men filed back through the door and up the stairs to her.

"She's still alive." one of them noted her quick, heavy breathing.

"Good." Another smiled psychotically.

The little boy opened his eyes after everything in the room went quiet, noticing that it was finally empty, save for the bodies of his mother and brother. He clamored out from under the bed, walking over to his big brother's corpse.

"Alex?" He asked naively, crouching down to be more at level with the fresh body. "Alex? Are you hurt?" He shook the cadaver gently with his hand, trying to wake it up. When he pulled it away, he realized it was suddenly coated with a thick, red liquid. "Alex?"

Heavy footsteps began down the staircase again. The little boy quickly ran over to the side of the door, peeking out carefully at the men.

"That was fun." The rifleman said, tying a rope that apparently acted as a belt back around his waist. "So are we going to loot the bunker now, Thor?"

"Not yet." The shotgun wielding man, apparently named Thor, answered. "I remember seeing some little shit in there when we first came in, I'm sure he's hiding around somewhere. Tank and Zeus, you look for him while Hansel and me grab all the goods." The three subordinates nodded. As the gang stepped off of the last step, the little boy quickly stuck his head back inside the room. He pressed his body up against the wall, trying to stay as quiet as possible. The four murderers walked into the bunker, passing right by him without noticing his small frame in their peripheral vision. As soon as their backs were to him, he turned and made a break up the stairs.

"What the?" The rifleman, Tank, said as he heard the sound of little feet running up the stairs behind him. The four men turned around.

"There's the bastard right there! Fuck!" The knife-wielder, Hansel, shouted. The little boy made it much farther than his sister had done, leaving the sights of the uzi-wielding man, Zeus, before he could bring him down as well.

"Get him!" Thor roared. Everyone charged up the stairs after the boy.

He didn't understand what was happening, or why, but he knew that he just had to run. He had to run and not look back. He heard the four men who murdered his family shouting obscenities a distance behind him, and every now and again a loud pop as they squeezed off another shot, whizzing right passed him, but he never turned his head. He sprinted for what felt like hours or days, nonstop, his developing brain screaming at him to ignore the fire in his legs and trudge onward.

Suddenly, he felt the world disappear.

Tumbling, rolling down a steep river bank, he plunged into the Potomac River, his tiny body disappearing under the viscous, green water. Thor and his entourage quickly came upon the bank, carefully moving down the steep hill to the water.

"Man, he fell in." Hansel stated.

"Fuck that, he ain't getting away!" Thor said with determination, plunging a hand into the murky water to try and grab at the boy. "AAAAARRGH!!!" He screamed in pain, pulling his appendage out of the river and holding it up. It was beet red, sizzling with radiation. "Fuck fuck fuck son of a BITCH!" He cursed.

"Are you okay?" Zeus asked, moving to inspect the throbbing hand.

"No, asshole!" Thor snapped. He breathed deeply. "Fuck it...That kid's fried in this fucking water. Shit, let's go." He turned around, hunched over and nursing his wounded limb, and began walking back to the bunker that he had just raided. His comrades followed.


	3. A Stark, Empty Cradle

The little boy's body came to a rest several miles away from where it had fallen into the water, the unfeeling currents sweeping him along, dunking his head down into the sightless depths to quell any protests. It held its grip on him for so long that he had lost all sense of time before finally throwing him up onto its bank, long after his consciousness had left him.

"What the...?" A figure peered down from the lip of the bank at the boy. He carefully made his way to him, gasping in shock when he was close enough to keenly observe. "Holy crap!" He exclaimed. He quickly got a bearing of his surroundings, looking this way and that to make sure that no one was around, and scooped up the child into his arms. He held him gingerly as he climbed back up the bank and trotted off into the Wastes.

It was several hours before the boy finally awoke. He sat up and yawned, stretching his tiny arms outward. He realized, when his hand accidentally hit against the wall next to him, that he was not sleeping where he was supposed to be. He looked around, realizing that he was sitting in a bed in a small shack that seemed to barely be able to accommodate one person. Next to his bed was a hot plate plugged into a small generator and a dresser full of clothes.

"You're awake. I hope that you slept well." A cracking, strained voice called from behind him. "You looked like you had just had a Hell of a time when I found you by the river." The boy turned around to look at who his savior was. Upon getting a glance at the man standing in the doorway, he screamed in horror. Monster! He had been kidnapped by some sort of monster!

"Whoa, whoa, calm down!" The man said, caught off guard by the sudden shrieks. He moved closer to the boy - He looked like a walking skeleton with his skin tightened and so hard over his bones that they were cracking and splitting. His nose and ears were completely gone, and so was most of his hair. His flesh looked like sandpaper. The boy jumped back, pressing against the wall.

"PLEASE GO AWAY PLEASE MONSTER DON'T HURT ME!" He shouted, shutting his eyes to try and wish the beast away.

"I'm not a monster, kid! I'm just like you!" He took a step towards the little boy, who only forced his body against the wall harder, as if he would eventually magically phase through it.

"NO! I'M A HUMAN! YOU'RE A MONSTER!" He cried. The beastly man suddenly stopped, the growing worry in his face to try and placate the child suddenly replaced by a momentary confusion.

"Kid...Have you seen yourself?" He asked. The child's screams calmed into frightened sniffles until the question finally sank in. He slowly opened one eye, looking at the man and realizing that he was not trying to devour his nubile young frame. He turned to him completely.

"N...No...?" The boy answered hesitantly. The man ran a hand over his bald head, which gave off an unpleasant scraping noise.

"I think maybe you ought to look at this." He said awkwardly. Turning, he picked up a slightly cracked and dirty, but still serviceable, mirror that was sitting on top of his dresser and held it to the boy. The child peered into it, his eyes growing as wide as saucers as he stared at his reflection - bald, skinny, torn, dry skin. He looked just like a smaller version of the man he had been calling a monster. He backed against the wall once more before sliding down into a sitting position, bewildered.

"That's....Me?" He asked, his voice quivering.

"The water in the Potomac is too irradiated for a normal person to survive falling into..." The man explained, though the lecture wasn't helping to alleviate the uncomfortableness of the situation. "But you're like me...Radiation doesn't...Uh...Doesn't hurt you. It only changes you..." The boy brought his knees to his chest and sunk his head inside. He began to cry. "Oh geez, kid, come on, it'll be alright. Come on..." He moved closer to comfort the child as best he could.

That had been over twenty years ago when they had first met - The boy just an innocent child, the man a good-hearted but confused survivor. It was a little sad to think about the fact that if the child had not been changed into the horrifying creature he had become, they would not have been able to bond as they did, but as far as they knew they were two of a kind in a desolate land, and that brought them together.

The man, Helike, and his young charge, now matured himself, stalked through the dunes of the Wastes, armed with a few scavenged hunting rifles.

"You see, back when I was in the army," Helike whispered to his adopted son, "Yeah, fighting prowess, strength, that was all important, but the most important thing that a soldier could ever have was loyalty." He peeked over the hill that he was perched on, looking for anything below that was moving.

"Loyalty?" His apprentice parroted.

"Definitely. Loyalty to your country, to your superiors, to your platoon and comrades." He stared down the iron sights of his rifle. "Not like the monumental screw-up that lead to this whole mess, where the only thing that mattered to any soldier on either side was who had the best armor and the biggest guns. A lack of honor is what drove the world into this state, kid, and ain't it a lovely world it is." He asked rhetorically, following the wandering Mole Rat with his gun. With one, practiced shot, he brought it crumbling to the ground. "Ha! Got you, ya little bastard." Helike stood and made his way down the hill to his prize.

"You've taught me so much, Helike." His squire smiled, following a few steps behind him. "How to hunt, how to survive, and how I should live my life..." He thought back to how, if it wasn't for Helike, he wouldn't have any life to live anyway.

"Hey, the credit all goes to you, kid." His master turned and gave him a sidelong wink. "You can't teach anything to the student who don't want to learn. Now help me carry this thing back to the shack."

He was only a few feet away from his kill when the loud sound of stomping feet alerted him.

"What the - HOLY SHIT!" Helike dove out the way as a large, black beast charged past, grabbing the dead Mole Rat in its wicked looking teeth. It wasted no time in lifting its entire body up and charging off.

"What the Hell is that thing?! Some sort of bear??" Helike's young apprentice asked, helping his master up.

"I don't know, but it just took our god damn food!"

The young man watched the monster running off into the distance and felt a fire rising in his stomach. As soon as Helike was back on his feet, his son picked up his dropped hunting rifle and crouched down, pressing its butt into his shoulder and taking aim.

"Not today, you bastard..." He murmured through clenched teeth, taking several moments to place the shot precisely. After a second's hesitation, he pulled the trigger.

The shot went wild, flying past the black monstrosity without so much as plucking off a hair.

"...Fuck!" The young man stood up, throwing his rifle to the ground. Helike sighed.

"Well, there goes our dinner for tonight."

"What? Come on, Helike, we can still keep hunting." His apprentice turned to him.

"It's getting dark, kid. You don't want to be out in the Wastes at sundown. Come on, we can soldier up and spend a night without that slop anyway."

The young man sighed. "Yes, sir. You're right."

Helike nodded and lead the way back to his little shack, arriving just as the sun gently dipped into the horizon.

"Well, we don't have any food, we might as well get some sleep, then. We'll set out for a new hunt first thing in the morning.

"Yeah, good idea." His young charge agreed. The two men pulled off their makeshift clothing, stitched together from random bits of leather and skin from animals they killed, and gave them a quick dip in a large basin full of worryingly green water, scrubbing off any dirt and dead skin (their clothes tended to accumulate a lot of that) before hanging them out on a clothesline to dry. They then took apart, cleaned, re-assembled, and reloaded their guns, setting them carefully at their bedsides, before retiring for the night.

"Goodnight, kid. And don't worry, I bet tomorrow's bounty'll be twice as good as any shitty Mole Rat meat." Helike assured his apprentice as he put out the flame of the lantern he had scavenged up, surrounding the duo in darkness.

"Yeah...Yeah, I bet so, too." And with that, the two men went to sleep.

The young boy found himself in his family's bomb shelter, standing over Alex's body. He stared at it.

"Alex?" He asked naively, crouching down to be more at level with the fresh body. "Alex? Are you hurt?" He shook the cadaver gently with his hand, trying to wake it up. When he pulled it away, he realized it was suddenly coated with a thick, red liquid. The liquid began to sizzle and boil, suddenly eating away the flesh of his hand, all the way down to the bone. "AAAAAAAHHH!" He screamed in horror and pain.

"**What was that?"** Thor's voice, deeper, growling, reverberating around the room, asked from the Wastes above. The entire bunker shook as giant footsteps stomped down the stairs. The boy backed up against the wall as Thor, Zeus, Tank and Hansel entered into the room, giants, their faces the faces of a monstrous black, bear-like beast, mouths drooling the same red liquid that had disintegrated his hand. "**There's the little bastard!"** He grinned. The boy shrieked, running right at the four behemoths and diving between their legs, charging up the stairs.

"**_GET HIM!"_** Thor roared. The entire world shook. The child ran as fast as he could, but the stairs seemed to go on forever. He heard the distant sounds of the four monsters chasing after him. He felt something cold grab hold of him and turned back, screaming as the naked body of his sister had jumped up, straddling his back. He continued running, trying to shake it off, when suddenly he felt even heavier. Alex, too, had jumped and grappled him, drenching the boy's body in the warm red water. Donna and Howard's headless corpses followed next, jumping on him in a dogpile. He kept trying to run, but the weight of the bodies had slowed his minuscule frame to a crawl. Eventually he buckled under the weight. The shell of bodies began to pull him in, consume him.

"Kid! Quick! Grab my hand!" Helike called out to the boy. He looked up through the corpses, seeing his master peering inside, his arm stretched out to him. With all his might, he climbed up through the world of flesh and blood, even though hands were reaching out to pull him back down. He finally took Helike's hand, who managed to easily pull him out of the cave. "Whoo. That was a close one, kid." Helike smiled. The boy looked up to thank him, but saw a looming figure behind his adopted father, who was none the wiser.

"Helike! Look out!" He tried to shout, but it was too late. An explosion rang out as Helike's torso all but disappeared, showering his blood and bone all over the young boy.

He awoke with a gasp, laying in a pool of sweat. Sitting up, he looked down to make sure that Helike was still there, breathing a sigh of relief to see that his master was perfectly fine, sleeping serenely.

The dreams were getting worse and worse. Seeing your family die when you're not even in the double-digits yet is bound to have that effect on a person. But this was the first time that he had a dream that involved Helike. That involved Helike dying. It sent shivers down his back. No, he wasn't going to let that happen. He stood up out of bed and picked up his hunting rifle after quickly donning his damp clothes. No, he wasn't going to lose Helike. Not to murder, not to starvation, not to anything. He picked up the lantern at his master's side and set out into the Wastes.

Several fruitless hours passed. Frankly, the young man did not understand Helike's warnings at all. He had not seen a damn thing out in the dunes, much less anything that could possibly hurt him. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes with the crusty grating sound of sandpaper skin on sandpaper skin that he had long since become accustomed to and kept watching. He suddenly took notice of a distant, heavy sound. The sound of something stomping. Could it be the black beast from earlier that had stolen their kill? He stood up from his prone position on the ground, ready to go on for a second round. This time, he wouldn't miss.

"Over there!" He heard someone shout, realizing that the stomping he heard wasn't from one, large creature, but a bunch of people marching in unison. He didn't have any time to react before a sharp, biting pain entered into the fat of his thigh. He gave a sharp shout and stumbled to the ground.

"Got him!" Another voice shouted. The people, seven in all, quickly converged on the wounded man.

"You sons of bitches!" He growled in pain, getting to his knees and lashing out at the darkness to try and hit anyone around him.

"This one's got fight in him!" A feminine voice laughed. The young man felt a foot slam into his gut. He guffawed as the air left his stomach and hit the ground once more. Three of the people pinned his arms and legs down as a bright light illuminated the immediate area.

"Ugh, what the fuck is that thing?" Someone wretched upon getting a full view of his face. The person holding down his left arm immediately drew back in disgust. The captured young man began lashing out at the ankles he could see with it, trying to cause any modicum of pain to any of these captors.

"Calm down, dumbasses. I've seen his type before. They call 'em Ghouls." The man talking replaced the disgusted one in pinning down the captive ghoul's arm. "Smart as a human, ugly as sin."

"Shit, we can't take it back, then. Who'd want to buy this repulsive motherfucker?"

"Yeah, let's just kill him and keep looking." Someone suggested. The hostage tried to fight against the people holding him down at these words, to no avail.

"Fuck that. We've been hunting all night long. No way, we're taking this one, I don't care what the boss says." There was a short murmur among the group of people.

"Fine, but if he doesn't like it, then it's your ass."

"Whatever."

The young ghoul felt the butt of a gun slam against the back of his head and blacked out.


	4. Where the Sun is Silent

"...That's all you caught..." A voice echoed on the fringes of his consciousness.

"...I'm gonna be sick..."

"...Bet it could start a fire by rubbing its hands together..."

He finally opened his eyes, the Wasteland sun burning bright and turning his vision into a muddled splattering of brown. The ghoul sat up and rubbed at them until he could see a coherent image in front of him: A locked cage.

"What the...!" He said with a start, jumping to his feet. "Where the....How'd I... Where am I?!"

"Paradise Falls." Answered a voice from behind him. He turned around, realizing that he was not the only one caged in.

"What the Hell is Paradise Falls?" He asked, feeling his stomach sinking lower and lower into his gut as the gravity of the situation slowly began to the set in.

"Slave-traders. They go and kidnap people from the Wastes, then sell them as forced labor." The man answered from his sitting position, leaning against a small pile of rubble.

"Slave-owners? That can't be...Shit! Shit!" He couldn't believe what a stupid move he made last night, going against Helike's wishes. "Well, come on! We can't just sit here. All they got separating us from the outside world is one lousy lock. All of us can beat 'em!" He looked around at the rest of the slaves, only now realizing how the majority of them were backed up a good ways away from him, some literally cowering in the corner. "Well? What's the matter with you?"

"They've never seen something like you, before. Scares them." The informative man answered again.

"I ain't nothing to be scared of! I'm a man just like any of you!" He was beginning to become extremely annoyed at dealing with people.

"Don't bother. Most of these poor people have been put through Hell and back to crush their will, to make them malleable for servitude." The man stood up, stretching. "They are incapable of trusting you, or caring."

"Yeah? And what about you? You seem pretty well-adjusted."

"Tip number one at surviving in this place: Don't be noticeable. Never speak, always make eye contact while in a lineup, hide whenever possible. That's how you don't end up like one of these poor bastards, and that's how you stay in the relative safety of the pens and not in some psycho's shanty who will just as soon blow your brains out and come buy another one."

"That's crap!" The ghoul fired back. "I'm not going to 'beat the system' by acting exactly like they want me to act! A cowardly bug under their feet!"

"A lot of people who come through here have that kind of attitude. Trust me, unless you do things my way, you won't last." The man leaned over to peer past the ghoul's side. "Looks like the head Slaver's coming over right now to inspect his new pack. Better shape up."

The hostage young ghoul turned around, seeing a rather sharply-dressed fellow making his way over to the cages with an entourage of men in combat armor, wielding assault rifles, in tow. The slave who had been dispensing advice imperceptibly slunk away, off into some corner, disappearing.

The sharp-dressed man produced a key from his pocket, unlocking the gates that held the ghoul in. He swung them open, allowing himself and his followers inside. The ghoul looked him over keenly. He was tall, his skin baked a handsome tan by the Wasteland sun. He somehow managed to find some Pre-War tuxedo in perfect condition, wearing it underneath a long, black duster that nearly swept along the ground. He seems to have hung any sort of metallic item arbitrarily off of pockets and lapels to make a jingling noise when he walked. He stopped a few feet away from all the slaves.

"Alright, then, boys." He said, his voice a sort of aristocratic facetiousness that the ghoul immediately despised. "Present your latest catches."

A portion of the armed men accompanying him broke off and went into the crowd, each one grabbing a slave, pulling him or her forcefully up and over to form into a line in front of the sharp-dressed man. One of them grabbed at the ghoul, who decided that the amount of guns in the area was a good incentive for him not to resist at the moment. He let himself be lead into the formation. The sharp-dressed man began looking over the new meat, stopping immediately upon spying the irradiated Wastelander.

"Jesus, Shotty, what did you do to him?" He asked, looking him up and down with a genuinely perplexed look on his face.

"Nothing, boss. Baron says he's called a ghoul. He's just like a real human, only, ugly." The slaver at the ghoul's side informed. The captive looked this 'Shotty' over subtly, noting that he was holding a Chinese assault rifle and had a knife sheathed at his hip.

"Shotty, are you stupid?" The boss said bitingly. "You know that 95% of slave-selling is presentation. Who's going to want something that looks like it started melting before we even found it?"

Shotty averted his eyes from his boss, knowing that he was wrong. "You're right, Mr. Vic. I'm sorry."

"Just take the thing out back and kill it." The boss, Mr. Vic, ordered. The ghoul felt his back straighten like a bolt of lightning had shot through it. In one blink of an eye, he visualized all the hunting and martial artistry that Helike had learned from his army days and then taught him, and he started moving without thinking. He turned and pulled Shotty's knife from its sheath, bring it up in a crescent motion and slicing the Slaver's neck. Before anyone had time to respond, he caught the dying kidnapper's assault rifle out of mid-air and began firing, strafing left to right and immediately dropping three more of the slavers, focusing on the men with guns instead of the head of the industry, Mr. Vic, who had seemingly found cover.

He fired non-stop for ten seconds before the bullets stop with a click. The ghoul grunted when he realized he was out of ammo and turned to one of the slavers who had been in the lineup with Shotty. The ghoul quickly charged him, slamming the assault rifle's butt into his face with a gooey crack as his nose collapsed into his skull and snatched his own rifle, which he then shot at the rest of the slavers in the slave file who had eluded the first fusillade.

After the second assault, the ghoul noticed Mr. Vic, standing at a pile of bodyguards that had just been struck down. He growled at the slave-owner with a primal rage, kicking up Shotty's bloodied knife into his hands and charging, fully intending to get the boss certified as a ventilation shaft. The desire did not come to pass, however, as he suddenly felt himself lifted off the ground, his insides feeling like they had just caved in. He flew a ways back before stumbling to the dirt.

"Thank you, Warrant." Mr. Vic said to the large man standing behind him, who had just slammed his sledge hammer into the ghoul's stomach. Mr. Vic walked over to the downed slave, kneeling next to him, lifting his upper body up by the collar of his stitched-together shirt. "My, my, my, that was impressive, Charon." He smiled.

"My name's...not...Charon..." The ghoul gasped. "It's-" His head snapped back as Vic slammed an elbow into his forehead. He groaned in pain.

"Let's make it clear now, you abomination, that whatever happened in your past life, before you were shuffled into this cage, is forfeit. It no longer matters. I do not care one whit about what your name is. From now on, you're Charon, because that impressive little display of bloodshed has convinced me that I can turn you into an effective little ferryman of the dead."

"Bastard....You bastard...I should've killed you first..." The ghoul sputtered.

"Ah, your anger is misdirected, young Charon." Vic stood up, dusting the dirt from his knees. "But don't worry, in due time, we'll teach you where exactly you should be directing it at." He turned and walked over to Warrant. "Put him in The Box. We'll start him off with some sensory deprivation."

"Crown, are you crazy? We've got to kill him. He just offed five of our guys, and wounded a dozen others!" Warrant objected.

"Well then, maybe these idiots ought to learn not be off guard, holding loaded weapons, around someone with more combat experience than them, now don't they?" Crown Vic shot Warrant a venomous look. "Now put him in The Box." Crown ceased all conversation by walking off back to his quarters without waiting for Warrant's answer. The large slaver grunted.

"Yes, sir."

The ghoul - Charon - felt himself be lifted up, his feet dragging across the rocky ground of the Wasteland. He began to feel the wind returning to his gut, and tried to struggle against the hold that his captor had on him.

"If I wanted to, I could snap your puny little spine right now." Warrant informed Charon, feeling him squirming in his grip. "So don't bother trying to get free." Charon did not cease, but did looked up at where he was being taken. He recognized it as an old Pulowski Preservation Shelter from before the bombs fell. When he was a young boy, in the months leading up to the war, he and his friends would always use it as a good hiding spot in Hide-and-go-Seek. He was surprised to see one, one that was still in working condition, after all these years.

Warrant pulled out a key and jammed it into the side, where the coin-slot had been torn out and re-purposed into a lock. He turned the key and the door slid open.

"Home sweet home." He said.

"Wait, wait, you can't put me in that god damn thing!" Charon protested, not fond of the idea of being trapped in such an enclosed space.

"Really? Let's see." The large man heaved the ghoul inside, who flung through the door and slammed against the back wall with a metallic thud. He turned quickly to try and run out before the door closed, but he just wasn't fast enough. He heard the lock mechanism click as Warrant pulled the key out.

"You can't keep me in here! You bastards!" He yelled, slamming against the door. "Let me out! Let me out god dammit! Let me out!!" He wasn't going to give up. He wasn't going to let his spirit be broken and end up like one of the poor fools in the slave pen. He screamed and beat for hours, which turned to days, in complete darkness save for the paltry sliver of sunlight shown through the slit that had been drilled into the bottom of the door to allow some food through, that was just as quickly closed as it was open.

Exactly one week had elapsed when the door slid open again. The sunlight burned hard on Charon's eyes.

"You son of a bitch!" He growled, though with markedly less intensity than the week before, and moved to try and grapple Warrant. As he stepped out of the box, he suddenly felt as if gravity had begin a slow spin, falling to his knees.

"Feeling woozy?" Warrant asked, smirking. "That's what happens to people who get put in The Box. So much time in total darkness, you begin to forget where the ground is. It'll pass. Now come on, Crown wants to see you." He grabbed the ghoul by the scruff of his neck and dragged him away.

Charon felt himself drop onto something cold and metallic. He tried to stand up, realizing that he was on some sort of playground carousel with the bars removed.

"Charon, my boy!" That familiar, disdainfully haughty voice rang in the ghoul's ear. "Good to see you survived The Box. I had a feeling you would." Charon turned slowly to look at Crown Vic. He wanted to jump at him and tear his throat out, but he was feeling too weak and disoriented to do either.

"You asshole...What are you going to do to me, now?" He growled.

"Just a little behavioral exercise, is all. Nothing too strenuous." Crown gave an award-winning, rictus smile. Several slavers walked in behind Vic, none of them wielding assault rifles this time, but long, thin rods. They all took a position around the carousel, tapping their rods in their hands or on their shoulders expectantly. "Ah, good, we're all here. Well, let's begin."

One of the slavers grabbed the carousel about the edges and gave it a push, sending it spinning. Charon immediately began to wobble and stumble, the effects of moving from The Box to the real world having not left yet.

"Now, Charon, tell me; What do you think of me?" Crown Vic asked.

"You're a...Whoa! You're a god damn son of a bitch!" Without hesitation, the slaver nearest the ghoul lashed the rod across his back, sending a sharp, fiery pain through him. "ARRGH!" He shrieked, stumbling forward. "God damn you!" He growled, only to be whipped again in the leg. He once more yelled.

"Are you happy, Charon?" Crown Vic continued, pretending not to notice the amount of pain and confusion the ghoul was in.

"I fucking hate you!" Another rod bit him in the side. He felt blood running down his leg.

"Is free will always a good thing?"

"Wha-I..What?" The pain and dizziness was sending Charon completely off the mental track. A rod caught him in the back of the knee, sending him onto all fours.

"I said, is free will always a good thing?"

"Stop! Stop! I can't - Gnnnnrrrr!" The stick lashed against the arm supporting him, sending his head crashing to the metal.

"Is free will always a good thing, Charon?"

"I don't know! AUGH!" Another whip against his back.

"Is."

Another rod slashed his back.

"Free."

And another on his side.

"Will."

An aimed shot on the sole of his foot, splitting the skin.

"Always."

And another across his shoulder blades.

"A."

And another on the side of his neck.

"Good."

And another on his thigh.

"Thing?"

"No! Okay?! No! Is that what you want to hear!? No!!" Charon shrieked. He'd say anything to get them to quit at this point.

The carousel came to a stop. Charon lay prone in its center, hands covering his head, blood pooling around his knees.

"Ah. Good job today, my boy." Crown Vic said with a smile. "You've made some real progress." Charon said nothing. "Warrant, take him back to The Box now." At this, the ghoul raised his head.

"What? No! I said what you wanted me to say!" He protested.

"Sorry, young Charon." Crown Vic said, amusement tinging his voice. "We don't give teacher's pets any special treatment, here."

Warrant picked Charon up, off of his feet, his hand pressing into the fresh wounds on the ghoul's back and causing him to moan in agony.

"No! You can't! No!" He cried, all the way back to the Pulowski Preservation Shelter.

"See you next week." Warrant said tersely, tossing him inside and locking the door.


	5. Impulsive Designs

Charon had lost all track of time and space. While he would overhear Crown Vic instructing Warrant to keep him in The Box for "another week" after each "exercise," he could swear that it was longer than that. He wondered if it was deliberate; Mention a week, and then lock him up for two, or three, or a month, who knows, just to further his disorientation and confusion.

The torments that Vic thought up for the ghoul were getting worse as well. Sometimes it would be a straight beating, until Charon would cry out for submission and mercy. Sometimes they would hang him from the edge of one of the burnt-out buildings upside down for hours, forcing him to recite typical Slave Creeds about being obedient and unobtrusive until his throat wore out and his face turned black. Once they injected him with Med-X and tied him to the carousel, spinning him as fast as their arms would allow until his brain would shut down and he'd go into a near zombie-like state before his senses came back to him. But still, none of it could compare to The Box. The sheer simplicity of it would make any sadist whistle with respect. Just staying, locked inside, in complete darkness, constantly forgetting that the world as you know it only stretches out half an arm's length from you on any side.

Charon would begin to feel his mind deteriorate whilst isolated in The Box. He felt his thoughts start to degrade. He felt his breathing start to quicken. He would slowly forget about his plight, only able to focus on the fact that he was hungry, and he wanted to eat. He'd start clawing away at the walls of the preservation shelter until his fingernails filed down into bleeding nubs.

He kept himself sane - as sane as he could - by clinging to his memory of Helike. Whenever he would feel his mind start to go, he would think to himself, "No, I won't let these bastards win. I'm going to get out of here someday and find him again. I know it. I know it.

I know it."

There was one day in particular that had impacted Charon the most. Warrant unlocked The Box and pulled him out, but had curiously brought him over to the Slave Pen, where the other captives were kept. The monstrosity of a man opened the cage and, without a word, shoved Charon in, locking the gate behind him.

"Am I..." Charon thought aloud. "Are you going to...To let me out of The Box?" He turned to look at Warrant for confirmation, but he remained silent. He eventually turned his back on the pen completely, seemingly uncaring about the ghoul. He felt a smile begin to stretch over his cracked and flaked skin. Okay, it wasn't as good as escape, but it seemed to be indicative that Vic had given up on trying to break him. Now he was just another slave. It filled him with hope, something he, well, he never felt in his entire life.

He turned to his fellow hostages, almost beaming.

"Guys, we can beat this." He said, optimism in his voice. " I broke the leader of this whole damn place before he broke me. We can tough it out, and we can get out of here." Charon stepped towards them, and watched them all immediately jump back. He cocked his brow. "Come on, guys, I've been here for months now. You've got to be used to my appearance. Look, we've got to get past this and work together." He tried moving forward again. The rest of the slaves scattered away from him. His smile soured into a frown. "What is wrong with you guys?"

"It isn't about your face. At least, not anymore." A familiar man stood up from his sitting position and walked towards Charon. It was the first slave he had ever talked to, the one who had advised him against making a scene in front of Crown Vic; Advice that, dwelling upon it now, was better than the ghoul had first judged.

"What the Hell do you mean? If it's not about my looks, then what are they afraid of? They don't know me." Charon said, annoyed and confused.

"Definitely not. But they know of you." The slave answered back.

"What is that supposed to mean? Stop with the riddles, jackass."

"First, my name's not 'Jackass.' It's Reese." The slave corrected. "And second, the last time any of these people - well, the people who were around when you first got here - saw you was your outburst against Vic."

"Yeah? I managed to kill five of the bastards. Pretty good if I say so myself."

"You killed three that had been at Vic's side. Then you turned and started shooting at the slavers who were in the line with you." Reese cocked his brow in a 'how are you not getting this?' expression.

"....And?" Charon asked, genuinely not getting it.

"Collateral damage, my friend. Your assault on the slavers in the line managed to accidentally kill three of the slaves." Charon felt a chill run up his spine. He had never realized that before. That day, he had been running purely on instinct, he had not thought about any of it. He really murdered three of his fellow captives?

Reese continued.

"They put you in The Box, and started spreading some pretty fierce propaganda against you. How you were a crazed monster, craving bloodshed and murder. How they were protecting us from your homicidal psychosis by keeping you locked up. Rumors spread to the new slaves that got captured, the tale of the caged beast in the preservation shelter. You've become the local boogeyman."

Charon felt sick. This was the exact opposite of everything he had been doing. Everything he had been working for. Everything that was keeping him sane in The Box. The slavers had become the heroes, and he had become the villain. Everything was wrong.

"I'm not a monster!" He shouted in defiance. He marched past Reese, towards the other slaves. "I'm perfectly normal! I didn't mean it! I didn't!" But they were hearing nothing of it. They would scream as he approached, running into the room at the back of the cage. When it was Charon and Reese alone outside, in the pen, the ghoul heard the lock click shut.

"Sorry, but it's worthless to bother, now." Reese turned to Charon. "I told you, these are all malleable souls, and they've been getting fed these ghost stories for years now."

Charon felt another bolt race up his back. He did a full one-hundred-and-eighty degree spin, kicking up dirt and dust all around him.

"Years?!" He shouted in surprise. "No, no, that can't be! I've only been here for a few months!"

Reese became visibly saddened at the news he was about to convey. "I'm sorry, but loss of time is just something that happens when you're put in The Box for any duration. You've been a lot longer than a few months." Charon stared holes into Reese, waiting for the continuation of this thought. The slave reluctantly trudged on. "You've...You've been here for..." He trailed off, honestly not wanting to finish the sentence.

"...For?!" Charon demanded. Reese looked away, not wanting to make eye contact. "FOR?!" The ghoul shouted.

"...Five years."

Charon felt control of his body leave him. He fell to his knees, the overwhelming sensation inside him that his heart was going to stop and he was going to die, and then this horrible nightmare would come to an end.

"Five....Years..." He repeated, having to say it himself to even comprehend the enormity of it all. He felt his muscles contort as he curled up into a fetal position Take him now, vengeful god, he pleaded, your torment has gone on enough. Smite him into a million particles of ash, spread them across the irradiated seas, just make it end. Just make it end now.

He heard the gate swing open behind him. Reese quietly shuffled away as the ghoul was picked up by Warrant once more. As he was dragged, unresponsive, back to his home in The Box, he realized how deep that Crown Vic's sadistic genius truly dug, and his fear for the unassuming man multiplied in orders of magnitude.

Warrant set Charon down right outside the open door to the preservation shelter, and without a word, the ghoul stepped inside, staring aimlessly at the gunmetal grey wall as the familiar darkness once again encapsulated him.

.

.

.

Charon stood, still and quiet, as Vic walked around him in circles, rubbing his chin contemplatively. The ghoul did not know how long it had been since when he was put in the Slave Pens again, but he did not care. Time didn't mean much to him anymore. Nothing did.

"Tell me, Charon," Crown Vic started finally after a long, stiff silence. "Is there anything that means a lot to you?"

"Material possessions are vices unless given as gifts of good will from a person of superior status." Charon replied almost immediately. His expression did not change, even though he had been made to repeat that exact phrase hundreds of times now.

"Good, good, but I was not talking about the material world. I mean are there any values that mean anything to you? Truth? Justice? Loyalty?" He probed further. Charon's eyes lit up at the mention of the word 'loyalty.' He flashed back to his last day with Helike, hunting Mole Rats in the hills.

"Fighting prowess and strength is important, yes, but the most important thing that a soldier could ever have is loyalty." He parroted Helike's words to the best of his memory. Vic turned to look at him, intensely interested in apparently hitting a hot-button word.

"Indeed it is." He replied, rolling with what Charon had given him. "But it is important to know who you are loyal to, right?"

"Loyalty to your country, your platoon, and your comrades." Charon parroted once more. Vic wondered if he had found an old army book and memorized the propaganda inside.

"Are you loyal to me, Charon?" Crown asked. Charon's fingers balled into a fist.

"Yes." He stated.

"Are you sure?" There was a short silence.

"I am sure." The ghoul finally admitted.

"Well then, how about we make your loyalty to me official?" The Slaver Boss asked. Charon looked down at him.

"How so?"

"Well, kid, you see, loyalty isn't something that can be seen, or heard, or felt. It's there, sure, but how do we know it's there, you understand? What I'm proposing is that we write up a contract, one that says that, as long as I hold it, you will remain loyal to me." Crown gave a toothy smile. Charon felt his finger tips digging into the skin of his palm.

"If you think that's best, then I agree."

"Perfect. I'll go fetch Baron then, and have him write everything up. Stay here while I go find him." Crown left the room, not bothering to close the door to outside behind him. Charon stood still and waited.

The process took very little time, and soon a large document emblazoned at the top with a flamboyant "CHARON'S CONTRACT" had been penned. Crown Vic picked the parchment up after it was done and skimmed it, though Charon wondered if he was just pretending like he was checking for errors.

"Ah, it's perfect. Now all you need to do is sign it, Charon." Vic held the pen out for the ghoul to take. He wordlessly plucked it from his hand and signed "CHARON" in crude letters, knowing only the basics of literacy thanks to his young age when the bombs had fallen. "Good!" Vic pulled the paper out from under Charon's nose and rolled it up. "It's all done!"

"Aren't you going to sign it?" The ghoul asked. Vic chuckled a bit as he stuffed the parchment into one of the many pockets lining the inside of his duster.

"Your signature is quite enough, Charon. Remember, you're a...bodyguard for hire." Vic dodged around the operative word, though Charon wasn't sure why. It wasn't like it was a secret. "So if someone else hires you, I can just give them this document instead of them having to write up a new one to sign."

"I see." The ghoul answered tersely.

"I knew you would. Now that you've signed this oath to me, stating that you will be my loyal and honorable guard, I need to ask something of you, my boy. Something important." Vic said as he motioned for Baron to leave the room, which the slaver promptly did, closing the door behind him.

"I am listening."

"We have a certain...disloyalty problem, among the slaves in the pen." Vic concealed a smirk when he saw Charon cringe slightly at the word 'disloyalty.' He continued. "There's a certain slave there that we have had for years now. Nobody will give him a good home, he refuses to listen to us, and he sews dissent among the other slaves." Crown turned from Charon and walked to a large cabinet in the back of the room, which he unlocked with a key produced from one of his many pockets. He swung the door open, revealing a wealth of weaponry and ammunition inside.

Vic continued.

"I want him taken care of. To die." He pulled a combat shotgun out from the gun cabinet and loaded a drum into the magazine, turning back to Charon. He walked over to the ghoul.

"I think you may know him. His name is Reese." He held the gun out to him.

Charon knew what Vic was doing. He wanted Reese dead, but he wanted the ghoul to do it. To have a slaver kill a slave would be bad for the morale of everyone, but to have a fellow slave to do it, especially the slave known as the monster that they have to keep locked in The Box, that'll just be par for the course. He knew that Reese was the only slave that Charon had done anything close to befriending, as well, and this would be the ultimate show of submission and loyalty to him. This bastard, this demon in a dress-shirt who had tortured Charon in every possible physical and emotional way for years, was handing him a loaded gun, and telling him what to do.

Charon took the gun from Vic's hand and looked him in the face.

"It will be done." He assured, turning and walking out the door.

Charon trudged silently from Vic's quarters to the Slave Pen, where Warrant was standing watch as per usual. The mammoth man gave the ghoul an odd look as he approached.

"Master Vic needs me to complete a task inside the pen." He said, expressionless. Warrant looked him over, paying special attention to the gun he was now in possession of.

"If he needed to open the gates, he'd have told me himself." Warrant responded.

"You can go and verify with him if you would like, but if you leave this area without opening the gate, it will be in direct violation of Master Vic's wishes, and you may find yourself with a suddenly startling dearth of working organs." Charon stared into Warrant's eyes with a piercing gaze. Warrant, while not particularly moved by the threat, knew that at this point, if the ghoul had tried to act up, he would have already known.

"Alright, alright. Just don't start any shit." He relented, unlocking the door to the pen for Charon. He walked in wordlessly, not reacting at all when every slave that saw him back off in fright, many running back into their common house as per usual.

"They let you back into the pens?" Reese suddenly appeared from whatever spot he had taken to hiding to, walking up to Charon from behind. He didn't have time to react when he noticed the gun in the ghoul's hands as he turned around and, without so much as a grunt, unloaded a shell of buckshot into the slave's torso. Reese fumbled backwards and hit the ground, unmoving. Any other slaves that had yet to flee into the Common House screamed and did exactly that, and Warrant was already charging inside as the ghoul turned to make his exit.

"What in the FUCK did you do?!" He shouted in disbelief. Charon simply walked past him, not deigning to answer his question (partly because it was obvious that he had just shot and killed someone). Warrant, not satisfied with the ghoul's taciturnity, grabbed him on the shoulder and spun him around. Charon allowed it to happen, pumping the empty shell from his gun mid-spin and jamming the end under Warrant's chin as he completed it.

"I am sorry that I could not respect your wishes to 'not start shit,' but my loyalty is not with you." He said tersely, poking the barrel further into the man's neck, causing him to gag.

"Charon!" A voice called from a ways away. The ghoul relented immediately, recognizing the voice as Vic's. He turned. "Come back here, right now! What did you do?!" He asked in a very convincing display of shock and awe. He ran as fast as his legs could take him, weighed down by God-knows-how-many-pounds of metal and jewelry, taking a ball of the ghoul's shirt in his fist and pulling him toward him. "What the Hell did you do?!"

"He just fucking killed one of the slave's, Crown!" Warrant explained, exasperated.

"Is this true?!" Vic asked, looking right into Charon's eyes. Once again, the ghoul knew what game the slave-owner was playing at.

"Yes. Reese is dead." He answered flatly.

"You psychotic fucking zombie!" Vic backhanded him, hard. "What in the fuck is your problem?!"

"I told you we should have killed him, Crown! I told you!" Warrant testified.

"It looks like all our little behavioral exercises have been startling failures on this ingrate! We're just going to have to think of some new ones, won't we? Now come here you ugly fucker, you're lucky I don't charge you for that god damn slave!" Vic pulled Charon along, back to his quarters, to administer a savage beating, the ghoul's reward for a job well done.

.

.

.

The incident of Reese's murder was now nothing but a distant memory to Charon, the first of a long line of atrocities that he committed because of his loyalty to Vic. He found each new act that Crown made him do, no matter how morally disgusting, became easier and easier. At least he wasn't one of the poor, broken spirited fools in the pen, sputtering all day, waiting to be sold to an owner who won't find half as much use for them as Vic had for his personal ghoul "bodyguard."

Charon stood silently at the door to Vic's quarters. It was the dead of night, and Crown was asleep. Charon rarely slept, anymore. He figured that it was a lingering side effect from all his years in The Box. His sleep pattern became decimated when he couldn't tell night from day, and just never caught back up.

His shotgun was in his hands and trained immediately at the window when he heard the creak. There were many creaks and crumbles as the house settled all the time, and for each one, he would whip out his gun and be ready to shoot any invisible ghosts or demons that may have been the cause of it. This certain creak was different, though.

"Who goes there?" Charon said into the darkness, ignoring the clicheness of the line.

"Kid?" A disembodied voice asked quietly towards him. "Kid, is it you?"

Charon felt his jaw go slack, his shotgun almost slip out of his hands.

"He...Helike?" He asked back.

"It_ is_ you!" The voice said joyously. Helike walked out of the shadows and hugged him immediately. Charon did not know how to reciprocate, such feelings like happiness and joy being lost to him for the longest time now.

"Helike...But how? How did you-"

"You were gone when I woke up, kid." He explained, his voice faltering a bit as he apparently was weeping with joy. "I managed to follow your tracks though to a spot where it looked like there was a struggle with a bunch of other human opponents. There was blood everywhere, and the footprints looked like someone had been dragged away. For the first time since the bombs dropped, I sought out others for help and eventually learned about the slavers at Paradise Falls. I've been looking for it ever since."

"Helike...You're really here." Charon felt himself deeply in disbelief.

"I am, kid. I really am." He finally disengaged the passionate embrace, turning towards the window that he had entered from. "Now come on, security's light, it's real easy to sneak past 'em. Let's get out of here." He took a few steps forward, quickly realizing that Charon was not following. "Come on!" He repeated.

"Helike, I...I can't." The captive ghoul said reluctantly.

"What do you mean, 'you can't?' What, do they have a bomb strapped to you or something? Come on!"

"No...I...I have an oath...An oath to Master Vic." A deeply serious and mystified expression spread over Helike's face.

"Kid, what the Hell are you talking about? What oath?"

"I am..." Charon found it immensely hard to continue, but kept on. "...I am honor-bound to protect and to serve him."

Helike walked over to his adoptive son and put both hands on his face, looking at him straight in the eyes.

"My God...What kind of brainwashing did they do to you?"

"It's not brainwashing." Charon snapped. "It's just...I have to. I have to serve him, he is keeping me from rotting in the pens, or in The Box."

"You're willingly serving the guy who ENSLAVED you because he isn't quite as bad to you as he is to the others? Do you know how crazy that sounds?!"

Charon was silent.

Both ghouls in the room turned suddenly as the light flicked on.

"Well Holy Hell." Crown leaned against the doorway in a black robe, his arms crossed, looking at the sight in front of him. "What is this, some sort of family reunion?"

"Is this the bastard? This Vic guy?" Helike asked. Charon remained reticent.

"I am Crown Vic, if that's what you're asking." Crown answered with a smirk. "And who might you be?"

"The guy who's gonna kick your ass, that's who." He stepped forward, bowing up his shoulders.

"Don't!" Charon took a step to come between Vic and Helike.

"Kid..." Helike murmured, disbelievingly.

"Well then, Charon, you tell me; Who is this crazy character?" Vic asked, knowing that his ghoul slave would provide him with answers. Charon breathed deeply.

"His name is Helike, Master Vic. He raised me in the Wastes, before I was brought here."

"And now I've come to take him back. I'll kill every one of you fuckers if I have to!" Helike growled.

Vic gave a surprised "Ugh!". "So you're saying you're going to steal away Charon's comfortable shelter and source of food to take him out into the desert so you can try to hunt disgusting, mutated beasts for a living? I won't allow such a disservice to my best bodyguard to happen!" He said, mock-offended. "Charon, kill him."

Charon looked quickly between his adoptive father and his master.

"Master Vic, please..." He started.

"Are you being disloyal, Charon?" Crown cocked his brow.

"No!" Charon snapped.

"Then. Kill. Him." Vic stared at Charon with an intense look, boring into him with his eyes.

Charon turned to Helike.

"Helike, please, run. You can still get away." He whispered.

"Kid, are you kidding me? Has he seriously destroyed your mind this much? Come on! You have the gun! Make the right choice!" Helike begged.

"Yes, Charon. Make the right choice." Vic repeated, a smile playing on his face.

For the first time in years, Charon felt himself begin to shake.

"You can fight it, kid!" Helike would offer up. Vic remained silent, leaning against the doorframe. "Do what you know is right!"

"Come on, kid!"

"You can fight this!"

Charon breathed deeply, and turned toward Crown Vic.

For he did not want to have to see his second father die when he pulled the shotgun's trigger and heard his body fall to the floor.

Crown Vic pushed off the wall to a standing position, smirking but saying nothing, and walked back to his room.


	6. Dogs and Sheep

Charon served Crown Vic faithfully for many years. Vic was especially interested when he noticed that, despite the fact that the slave-owner was starting to show his age through the decades, the ghoul looked exactly as he did the day he was brought into Paradise Falls. This meant that, even as his own strength and vitality waned, he could still use Charon to do whatever he needed. In many ways, he became even worse than he did as a younger man, forcing his ghoul bodyguard to perform heinous actions that he would have normally just done himself, if he had the bones for it.

Charon barely spoke anymore. His only dialogue between Master Vic was Vic giving an order, and him saying, without fail, "Yes, sir." and then turning to leave. He never talked to anyone else. He at least would used to say things like he was busy at the moment and could not talk if someone bothered him, but now lately he either grunts or just ignores them completely. Any time he would pass by the pens, the slaves would run and cower at the far end of the cage. It happened so much now that he just stopped noticing it.

Crown Vic had long ago abandoned disguising the fact that he was personally ordering Charon to do his wet work for him. Now, a row of skulls of people that the ghoul had killed was proudly on display right at the entryway to the compound, Reese and Helike among them, along with slavers that Vic had felt were falling out of his good graces, such as the elephantine skull of Warrant at the far left. Whenever Charon passed the row on his patrols, he would wordlessly kick past them.

"Hey, Zombie." Charon heard someone call behind him. He did not turn around. A lot of the newer slavers treated Charon only slightly better than the average slave, knowing only that he was under Vic's command and thus would not randomly attack them. Of course, they didn't know that, with their lifestyle, under Crown's thumb, the very same "Zombie" had a high chance of being the direct cause of their death, a fact that most of the senior slavers respected well enough.

A young, fresh-faced lad, ready to morally bankrupt his soul in his new career, walked out in front of the ghoul.

"Didn't you hear me, retard?"

Charon simply stared past him, watching the door.

"Vic says he wants to see you right away." The young man continued after a silence, somewhat disappointed that the bodyguard hadn't reacted to his taunts. As ghouls became more and more commonplace in the Wastes as time went by, common insults like "zombie" and the like tended to get thrown around, either as derogatory epithets, or just to annoy them. Charon did not care either way.

"Master Vic can come to me himself." He said finally.

"He can't, asshole. He's in a meeting with a client. Here, he gave me this note to prove that it's from him." He shoved a crumpled up piece of old, yellowed paper under the ghoul's (lack-of) nose. As usual with any time Crown sent a courier with a note for him, Charon did not care what the contents said, just that the signature was indeed Vic's. He grunted as he confirmed the origin of the letter and turned, marching off back to Vic's quarters.

As Charon walked through the door, he heard Vic's voice, strained and cracking with age.

"Ah, here he is, now! Best bodyguard in all the Wastes!" He smiled, his grin somewhat less impressive than his halcyon days when he possessed all of his teeth. The man that was at Crown's side looked Charon over quickly, his face painted with an expression of surprised disgust. He turned to Vic and tried to whisper something into his ear, however he was the type who just couldn't seem to correctly control the volume of his voice, so his words were easy to listen to.

"You didn't say he was a ghoul!" The man complained.

"And what of it? So maybe his skin looks like someone took a potato peeler to him, he's still the most efficient damn killing machine this side of a sentry bot."

The man rubbed his chin in deep contemplation. While Charon was stone-faced and taciturn, he was counting all the ways the man was an asshole.

"It's not like you have to live with him." Vic said after a silence, the man still trying to make up his mind. "After you get to where you're going, just sell off his contract again." That Vic, always coming up with those solutions that made everybody happy.

"Yeah...Yeah, okay, I guess you're right. I'll take him." The man finally relented.

"Wonderful. Charon, meet your new master; Harrison." The man gave an awkward wave.

"Master Vic, I have been under your service for decades, now. I cannot simply follow another man." Charon found himself going to a place beyond consciousness in these times, when he would just parrot something that a normal slave would say without thinking about it.

"Ah, but you can, my friend. Here, this my look familiar to you." Vic reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a scroll. He unrolled it, letting both Charon and Harrison look at it: "CHARON'S CONTRACT" it announced in bold letters. In all honesty, the ghoul had completely forgotten about its existence. "This has been the concrete bond between us, Charon. And now, I'm passing it onto Harrison. Treat him well as you have treated me." Vic smiled again as he handed the parchment to the slave-buyer, who rolled it back up and set it between his waist and his belt.

"So I am no longer honor-bound to serve you?" Charon asked, his eyes darting between Vic and Harrison.

"That's right, my boy. Bon voyage!"

Charon looked at Crown Vic hard. This withered old man. This evil little hunchback. Fifty years of service, fifty years of buying, selling, and killing every race and creed, and he was still smiling. That same smile that Charon had seen on his first day in the pens. That same smile when he was getting lashed by rods. That same smile when he cast a knowing glance from the doorway, completely assured that Charon would turn around and kill his adoptive father.

Charon looked at Crown Vic hard, and felt nothing.

"Very well then. I shall follow Master Harrison as far as he deigns to take me." He turned and followed the man out the door, and out of Paradise Falls. He learned some years later that Crown had died peacefully in his sleep.

The man and his ghoul came into the Wastes, where a brahmin toting several packages strapped to its back was waiting.

"Listen..." Harrison said as he checked to make sure all of his inventory was still on the mutated cow's back. "I don't want you to think I'm a bad person. I...I don't really condone slavery, really." He glanced at Charon, who stood as still as a statue behind him. "It's just that, well, I'm a merchant, and I'm trying to travel all the way across the state, and who knows what kind of people and other stuff is waiting out there, you know? I already got attacked once, see?" He lifted up his shirt, showing the fresh cut on his side that looked like it was from a glancing knife slash. "I wasn't looking for a slave, just a bodyguard..."

Charon continued staring at him, his expression wooden.

"Uh, okay...Well, let's go." He coughed, turning around.

"As you wish." Charon responded, which caused the merchant to jump slightly. He grabbed the hanging reins on the brahmin's neck and began walking, pulling it along with him. Charon followed several steps behind.

Charon had not left Paradise Falls for some fifty years, but the Wasteland was exactly as he remembered it. Empty, brown, puddles of discolored water everywhere. The complete starkness of it all made it easy for him to hear the sound of approaching feet, and was surprised to see that Harrison had apparently not detected it.

"Look out." Is all he offered as he turned, pulling his shotgun out into his hands. Harrison gave a half-hearted "Huh?" as he looked Charon's way, the ghoul already having the mole rat in his sights.

"Come on, you bastard!" He yelled somewhat uncharacteristically, pumping a shot off into the mole rat's face. It was too far away, though, the pellets of buck shot only acting as an irritant as it drew near. "Yeah! Yeah!" His next shot took out the rat's left foreleg, causing it to tumble before regaining its balance. Charon ran to it, unleashing more and more rounds into its body. It was at times like these, he would realize, that he only ever let his real emotions out, anymore. Killing something that truly deserved to be killed was a good outlet for all the rage, and anger, and depression that welled up in him over the years that he simply never showed. The ghoul continued firing into the mole rat well after it was dead, it's head eventually exploding in a shower of gore that covered his armor.

"Hey! Hey! Jesus, it's dead!" Charon finally perceived Harrison shouting at him. The bodyguard stopped immediately, slipping his shotgun into the holster on the back of his armor. He returned to Harrison's side soon after. "Damn, man, it was just a mole rat." The merchant observed, surprised at his bodyguard's brutality. "You didn't have to flip out."

Charon grunted.

Their journey continued well into the night, when Harrison decided that it was too dark to continue. He set up a little camp, offering Charon a blanket to sleep with, which the ghoul denied. He didn't sleep much anymore. Harrison found that he wasn't getting much slumber either, however, as his bodyguard deigned to chase down every bloat fly, mole rat, or vicious dog that wandered into a twenty yard radius around them, yelling in fury and ecstasy, muzzle flashes lighting up the black sky like fireworks.

"Seriously, Charon, you don't have to go and kill every little thing you see." Harrison remarked the morning after. "I can't sleep with you murdering everything every five minutes."

"I am only keeping your safety in mind." Charon lied. This newfound masturbatory technique was simply too good for him to pass up.

"Whatever..." Harrison relented. "Just do it more quietly, okay?"

"As you wish."

The duo reached their destination in a few more days, a small settlement of people deeply in need of food and water, two products that Harrison was happy to provide. The very first good he sold, however, was the very contract binding Charon to his service. The man who bought it had received it for a hefty price, and when he was out of earshot of the merchant, he turned to the ghoul, the first words he ever spoke to him being,

"Kill that merchant, and get my caps back." An order Charon obeyed without protest.

That was the only two types of people that Charon ever worked for: Those who needed bodyguards because they were too weak to survive on their own, or those who needed murderers because they were too afraid of getting their hands dirty. There was no in between. The ghoul wondered if those were exclusively the only two types of people in the entire Wasteland, for as a century of his life slowly turned, and he was passed around like shots of booze from person to person thanks to their greed or their comparatively short life span, they were the only types he ever seemed to encounter.

Ahzrukhal was different, though. To Charon, he was more despicable than any other, but not because he was a particularly amoral being. No, in fact, Charon barely ever had to kill anything while under his service, mostly having to just throw miscreants out of Ahzrukhal's bar, The Ninth Circle.

Charon came into Ahzrukhal's service when one of his many human masters had unwittingly treaded too close to the Museum of History, a building that, for all intents and purposes, seemed bombed out and abandoned, but which held the largest, semi-secret gathering of ghouls in the DC Wastes. Several ghoul radicals, seeing Charon working for a "smoothskin," as he learned they were called, were filled with "righteous rage", ambushing the poor fool from all sides and beating him to death. He was one of the ones that was too weak to survive on his own.

Charon would have killed them all, every assailant that had just murdered his master, and any other inside the building that was watching if he had to, but he couldn't. They were all ghouls. They were all deformed, all cursed to live for centuries, maybe millennia, looking the way they did.

They all reminded him of Helike.

Despite this, and their efforts to free him, he refused to move from his dead master's side. The ghoul radicals were all shocked and appalled when he informed them that he was honor-bound by contract to serve a worthless smoothskin, but nothing they did would move him, verbally or physically. And that's where Ahzrukhal came in. Using his smooth talking skills and considerable pull in the politics of Underworld, he convinced them to officially pass Charon's Contract onto him, so that he could give the wayward, confused ghoul a home and a purpose. Everyone agreed, and Charon had yet another new master.

He hated Ahzrukhal most of all. Even more than Crown Vic. Even more than the Brotherhood of Steel paladin Siegfried, who had bought his contract so he could lead the ghoul to a desolate location and "euthanize him" (as far as Charon was concerned, being attacked by his master rendered the contract void). And it wasn't because Ahzrukhal had attacked him, or had taunted him, or had forced him to do anything that he didn't want to do.

For one hundred years, Charon stood in the corner of The Ninth Circle, and watched the bar. Watched every ghoul, everyone that looked almost like the spitting image of Helike, stumble into a seat, and get served booze and chems until they passed out. Watched Ahzrukhal ruining the lives of these countless people, these countless Helikes, all with a smile on his face, the only ghoul in all of Underworld that did not, to him, resemble his martyred father in any possible way. He watched him, every day and night, and despised him.

Charon watched the odd sight, one day, of a smoothskin strutting into The Ninth Circle. The human walked up to the bar, initiating conversation with Ahzrukhal. Charon could not help but listen from his post. He heard the smoothskin guffaw.

"2,000 caps?! I don't have that kind of money!"

"Well, there are always alternatives..." Ahzrukhal leaned in to whisper into the smoothskin's ear.

"That's all I have to do, eh?" The human asked. "And then he's mine for free?"

"For free." Ahzrukhal assured.

"Heh, okay then. I'll go and take care of your little problem." The smoothskin stood up from the bar and walked determinedly out of The Ninth Circle. Charon remained silent, knowing full well of what was about to happen. Another complete bastard of a person was about to become his new master, someone with no qualms about playing with an ending the lives of fellow humans. Someone who would take full advantage of the fact that their new bodyguard would do whatever they commanded him.

And at the same time, Charon would also no longer be honor-bound to serve, or protect, Ahzrukhal.

For the first time in one hundred and eighty years, he felt a sliver of silver lining in the clouds.

End.


End file.
